The present disclosure relates to a storage medium storing a storage area management program using a limited-life non-volatile storage device such as a solid state drive (SSD) and an electronic device including the storage area management program.
Hard disk drives (HDDs) have been widely used as non-volatile storage devices in image forming apparatuses and other electronic devices. In recent years, due to technical advancement in a semiconductor field and a cost reduction of semiconductors, some electronic devices use a non-volatile storage device using a semiconductor such as an SSD or a NAND flush device (hereinafter, may be described as a semiconductor drive). The semiconductor drive is useful since the semiconductor drive requires shorter reading time than the HDD. However, many semiconductor drives have limitations on a number of times of writing therein, and have a limited life. That is, the semiconductor drives cannot eternally be used, and thus the limitations on the number of times of writing therein needs to be taken into consideration upon usage of the semiconductor drive.
Thus, an image forming apparatus limits writing into a non-volatile storage device if a number of bad blocks in the non-volatile storage device has reached a specific number.
Upon excess of a number of times of writing into a partition of a non-volatile storage device over a specific number of times, a data storage limiter performs writing in the non-volatile storage device and also creates a backup in another non-volatile storage device. Note that another non-volatile storage device has a larger ensured number of times of rewriting therein than the aforementioned non-volatile storage device.